At last her eyes met his. He felt he might drown in the endless depths of those dark, brown orbs.
“I claim you, woman,” he heard himself say, as if from miles off. “You’re mine now.”
He slanted his mouth over hers and Traveled them instantly home, uncaring of the shocked, amazed stares of the comrades he left behind. Nothing mattered but that he get this woman, Niki—his Niki—safe within his lair as soon as possible.
Fate, it seemed, was not without an ironic sense of humor. And damned if he was able to prevent any of this from happening, though he knew it would all end in chaos. The reckoning would come and there was nothing he could have done to prevent it. Niki was in his arms, her mouth sweet and shocked and open beneath his. He wanted her. Fate had won and he would not fight it.
It was already far too late for that anyway. It had been the moment he laid eyes on her.
* * * * *
“What the hell just happened?” Emily exploded as Tryton and Niki disappeared.
“Did I actually see that?” Cinder sputtered.
“He kissed her,” Steffy smiled.
“Does he know her from somewhere else, maybe?” Cady frowned.
“No,” Grimm murmured. “But it seems that will not stop The Elder from claiming what he wants when he finds it.”
“Oh boy, here we go again. Only it’s the matchmaker’s turn,” Cady laughed.
“I do not think it will be so simple this time,” Grimm warned.
“Simple. You call mine and Sid’s mating simple? Shit, a more complicated match there never was—except for Steffy and Cinder’s. And Edge and Emily’s. Only this time, at least, we know the woman is gifted. We know she can become one of us. Tryton had no such knowledge when he first pushed me and Sid together.”
“We shall see.”
“Quit being so doomsday-ish Grimm,” Steffy grinned. “Let’s just sit back and see what happens shall we?”
“Yeah. But first, let’s go over and check out this Daemon. I want to make certain it’s dead and assure myself that there are no more of them before we go back home.” Emily stalked over to the fallen monster’s form.
“She didn’t take the heart,” Cady warned. It was well-known that to truly kill the beast, the heart—the seeming source of its life force—must be destroyed.
“She didn’t have to,” Grimm said softly at their backs.
“She stopped it,” Steffy marveled, kicking the side of the corpse, “with her mind. She killed it without even having to touch it.”
“Impossible,” Edge gritted out, a long silver-blue foil shooting from one finger. He used the blade to slice open the monster’s chest cavity.
The heart within was shriveled up, like a raisin. Lifeless and defeated, it did not beat.
“Holy shit!” Cinder exclaimed.
Steffy froze, her breath escaping her in a rush that startled nearly everyone around her.
Grimm remained stoically silent, as if he already knew what she had found, and perhaps he did know. He was The Traveler, after all. He seemed to know everything.
Steffy bent, dug delicately into the squishy ooze of the Daemon’s flesh. With an unpleasant, sucking sound, she freed something, grasping it tightly in her fist.
“Scheiße, Scheiße, Scheiße,” she echoed over and over, words so fast they nearly tripped over one another. A stream of German hummed through her lips, and the Shikar—all master linguists at birth—could barely follow her.
Steffy at last tore her wide gaze away from the odd, tarnished object in her hand, casting her eyes to Cinder in silent supplication.
“That’s an officer’s badge,” Emily, a former police officer herself, instantly recognized it.
“Oh no,” Cinder took the slimy badge from Steffy’s shaking fingers. “How can this be possible?”
“I’ve seen this badge before,” Steffy’s voice sounded choked and swamped with her fear and disbelief.
“Where?” Cady immediately demanded, grabbing for the badge to take a look for herself, as if the answer might lie there, but Cinder held fast and would not release it.
Cinder and Steffy regarded each other for a long, silent moment, while everyone else waited with baited breath for them to explain their reaction to the badge.
“Officer Ehlers…” Steffy swallowed hard. “He was there when we were attacked by Daemons that night, when Cinder and I were in Germany.”
“The night Cinder burned that field down with his firebomb,” Cady remembered the tale. Cinder had stunned them all. They had known he was a powerful Incinerator, but that powerful…it had boggled the mind. He had decimated a Horde Canker-Worm, and an entire field of crops besides. It was an incredible testament to his Caste strength and warrior prowess.
“Yes. But I never saw Officer Ehlers get killed. He had disappeared…”
“The Daemon must have killed him and taken his badge—for whatever reason. I’ve never claimed to understand how—or even if—these monsters think,” Edge growled.
Cinder turned back to the Daemon. He squatted down beside it, poked and prodded at it for several moments. Steffy knelt down beside him and reached for something in the muck.
It was a scrap of very stained, very rotted piece of cloth. It might have once been an odd pea-green color, or even blue, there was no real way to know.
But Steffy knew. She instinctively cast her eyes up towards Grimm, who stood calm and still in the shadows. “This is a piece of Ehlers’ uniform,” Steffy’s tone seemed to accuse him.
But Grimm held his secrets, just as well or better perhaps, than Tryton did.
“Ask The Elder your questions upon our return, if you wish to obtain answers,” his words confirmed to them all that he knew those answers but would not share them.
“Why the fuck does a Daemon have a police officer’s badge and part of his uniform?” Emily roared at him.
Grimm held his silence.
“I’m getting sick and tired of all this secrecy shit between you and Tryton and us,” Cady growled.
Grimm’s eyes glittered like stars beneath the black cowl that covered his face. “I do not give a damn, Cady,” he said flatly. “Ask Tryton your questions if you must, the answers are not mine to give.”
Cady stomped towards him, anger emanating from her in waves. A halo of fire danced around her hair. She, too, was an Incinerator—like Cinder—and it clearly showed now with her volatile storm of emotions.
“Do not anger me, little Cady,” Grimm warned. For the first time in a very, very long time, each and every Shikar there remembered why he had been so feared and so revered all these years.
Ten thousand years had passed since Grimm had made his mark as one of the greatest warriors the Shikar race had ever known. But sometimes, the passage of time could dim a memory…Grimm seemed more than capable of keeping that memory alive. He was dangerous—perhaps the most dangerous being alive but for Tryton—and he reminded them all of that now with his tone and with his words.
Grimm sighed suddenly, further surprising them all. “I do not wish to intimidate you, really I do not. But I ask that you respect my vows of secrecy. I repeat, ask The Elder your questions. Tryton is ready now, I think, to give you the information you have sought for so many generations.”
“I have a feeling we won’t like hearing what he has to tell us,” said Cinder.
“You won’t,” Grimm promised darkly.
“Let’s go home,” Cady said with a shaking voice, still eyeing Grimm—a man who she regarded as a great friend and ally—warily. She’d never heard him speak with such dangerous power in his voice as when he’d warned her not to anger him. She felt like she didn’t know him, as if he were a stranger, though how could that be?
She’d known him for years. She and Sid had made love for his viewing pleasure countless times. She’d seen the man naked—shockingly, gloriously naked—so many times, the image was burned on her brain. And yet she had never truly sensed the vast scope of his awesome strength and presence be
fore tonight.
It scared the shit out of her, this seemingly abrupt shift in Grimm’s demeanor.
And from the wary looks on all her friends’ faces as they moved closer to Grimm for the Traveling, she knew it scared the shit out of them as well.
Things, it seemed, were about to change. The rules of the game, the war itself, had shifted inexplicably. Unexpectedly. And she was damned if she knew how, after Tryton told them all the secrets they wanted to know, things could ever be the same in their world again.
Chapter Five
Somehow they’d ended up here, in this strange, mammoth stone chamber, and she had no memory of how they’d arrived.
Her mind was a whirlwind of confused emotions.
Niki felt the hard, hot slant of the golden Adonis’ mouth over hers. Shock—both from the long, hard run and from the climactic death of the monster—made her slow in responding, but respond she did. How could she not have?
He was the most amazingly gorgeous man she’d ever clapped eyes on.
But there was something more. Something incredible and terrifying in the way that he held her, so tight and possessive in his arms. Something in the way he kissed her that let her know he was so much more than just a man, gorgeous or otherwise.
His tongue was a hot flame dancing in her mouth, stroking her teeth and laving the roof of her mouth. Tasting her more deeply than any lover ever had dared before. As if he wanted to eat her alive. As if he wanted to swallow her whole.
The wide, flat press of his palm against her bottom, drawing her hips harder into the cradle of his, made her heart race. His fingers were so long, his palms so broad. She felt dwarfed, and she was not small by any means. He was so tall, so strong, so incredibly big that he was overwhelming.
Her nipples felt like burning stars on her swollen, heaving breasts. She couldn’t resist rubbing them against the rippling thrust of muscles on his chest and nearly swooned with the sensations as she did so. The man’s mouth pressed and moved over hers and the kiss consumed her whole world. Her mouth was filled with the spicy, manly taste of him. Her nose filled with the scent of rain and tangy ocean air.
The enormous jut of his cock against her, rubbing against the crest of her sex and belly, brought her out of her fugue and she remembered herself at last.
Bracing her hands against his shockingly broad shoulders she pushed with all of her might, but he would not release her from his embrace. Indeed, he didn’t even seem to notice her struggles. She pushed again and tried to turn her face away from his sinfully skilled lips. Those lips followed her, never once parting from the kiss.
Despite that he was a stranger, despite that she felt sure she might be in some very real danger with this man, she felt herself grow weak and wet with desire.
The man must has sensed this too, for he growled low in his throat—a sound that vibrated into her mouth and lungs along with the warmth and flavor of his breath—and ground his hips harder against hers.
God, he was so big. All of him. Huge, even!
Niki realized her eyes were closed and forced them open. With a shock that could have melted her very bones, she met the golden-orange glow of his awaiting gaze. Now she knew why people closed their eyes when they kissed—it was far too intimate, far too intense to stare into each other’s eyes this way. It was as if they were looking deep into each other’s souls and there was nowhere, no way to hide.
Niki shoved again, using the last of her strength to prove—if not to him, then to herself—that she was trying her very best to put a stop to this before it was too late.
The man growled again and loosened his hold on her. But he did not by any means set her free. Instead, he sucked her lower lip into his mouth, licking and drawing on it until she was completely lightheaded with arousal. One of his hands was still fisted in her hair, holding her captive in an almost primitive way. The other rubbed and squeezed the plump globes of her ass.
Thunder racketed the air around them.
Her heart fluttered. Her breasts ached. Her insides clenched with a force that would have stolen her breath if his kiss hadn’t already. Wet and swollen with need, she let her lips relax beneath his once more. She opened her mouth wide for his tongue again, and could have died with ecstasy when he gave it to her.
Had she ever wanted this much, so quickly?
Was this all a dream? A nightmare of monsters turned to a delicious wet dream with a totally, inconceivably sensual sex god? Did it really matter?
Niki heard a moan and was mortified to realize it was she who had made the urgent, husky sound. She hadn’t known until now that she could even make such a sound. Until this moment, she hadn’t known so many things about herself.
Was it safe to learn any more?
“Let me go.” She found the strength to gasp the words into his mouth.
He growled again but made no further response, merely ran his tongue along the length of hers, deep into the hot cave of her mouth as if she’d never spoken.
“I said,” she pushed hard, with all her might, “let me go.” She jerked her mouth away, feeling like a fool when he followed her and made her move it again and again, until she was shaking her head back and forth with desperate violence.
She kicked him in the shin.
His fingers dug deeper into the cheeks of her bottom to hold her still.
She bit at his seeking lips.
He wrenched her head back with the hand still fisted in her hair and laved the vulnerable expanse of her throat with his tongue.
Panic swamped her. Would this man ever release her, or would he continue to take and take until she was limp and weak in his arms? Her heart sped up, her head felt light, her vision dimmed.
Oh no.
The warmth of her magic filled her veins until they burned. Damn it. She didn’t want to hurt him. He needed to let her go now.
Power swelled between them, she could almost see it. Almost taste it.
“Stop, stop,” she begged.
His hips ground into hers.
Her hands began to shake and she beat them desperately about his shoulders.
It was too late. She felt the strange, unearthly wrenching as the storm of her strange magic erupted from her and struck out at him. For the second time that night she knew someone would die—but this time the target of her overwhelming power was not a beast but a man.
She cried out. Too late.
She could not contain it, the magic was unleashed. The man clenched her tighter to him—both arms around her—threw back his head and let out a mighty roar. His body shook against hers, taking the full brute force of her uncontrollable psychic attack.
Damn him, why hadn’t he released her? Why hadn’t he listened?
Not another one, please, don’t let this be another death on my conscience.
The man jerked against her, nearly crushing her bones in his ever-tightening grip, then sank to his knees before her. Niki felt her heart nearly shatter. She’d killed him.
The man gave a final moan and buried his face into the soft mound of her belly, both hands clenching her hips tight with desperation. While Niki had feared the stranger’s embrace, while she had sought release from his too-wicked kiss, she hadn’t wanted it to end this way. This was yet another death on her hands, which were already stained dark with blood…
“Forgive me,” the man rasped against her.
Niki started. He had the strength to speak these last words and he’d asked her for forgiveness?
“I’m so sorry,” she whimpered.
“I’ve never been so careless before,” he continued, astonishing her.
He didn’t sound at all near death. He sounded…languorous. Replete. As if they’d just made love.
How completely unexpected.
“Are you all right?” she asked hesitantly, dreading and fearing his answer. Her head ached from expending so much psychic energy.
His eyes rose up to meet hers again, glowing bright with a preternatural orange flame. “I’ve never
felt better.” Desire, thick and heady and quite intimidating in its intensity, coated each word.
He sighed and buried his face back into her belly, nuzzling her. “I’ve never come so hard before. You’ve driven me mad.”
Niki frowned.
The bastard! He’d not been struck down by her power after all, he’d only creamed himself! She jerked away from him and this time he could not hold her to him, he was still too enthralled in the aftermath of his pleasure.
Niki moved to put the distance of the room between them, putting her back firmly against an earthen wall, hoping its support could keep her shaking legs from buckling. Their eyes met and locked. No matter how she might try, she could not pull her gaze away from his as he knelt there, recovering, in the middle of the great room.
“What the hell just happened?” She finally found her voice after several tries. “Am I dreaming or what? One minute I’m in an airplane and the next—god damn—tell me I’m dreaming, please.”
“You are Niki Akitoye?” His eyes never left hers. They were so bright, so vividly colored, she felt hypnotized by them.
“This isn’t happening.” She stubbornly refused to answer him. Her head was pounding and she winced with the pain.
“I am Tryton.” He rose slowly to his feet.
Damn, but the man was tall. Nearly seven feet if he was an inch. With shoulders as broad as a barn and muscles that would have made an Olympic bodybuilder weep with envy. He carried his size so well, his every move completely controlled and full of grace, and Niki felt something low inside of her clench with lust.
Her eyes drank him in from head to toe. He had the longest, softest looking hair—so blond as to be nearly white in some places. The bright, unearthly eyes were slanted almost like a cat’s. The irises were wide and bold around large black pupils, rimmed with tones of gold and orange around a band of red fire. His skin was a deep, dark bronze, contrasting starkly with his pale hair and glowing eyes.
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